FamilySearch Gazetter incorrect

Labone

Hi Fellow Family Historians

I hope you are using the Suggest a new place, https://www.familysearch.org/en/research/places/

all the time. I am, howwever there are times where there are blatant minomer of places and you cannot add them such as the ridings in yorkshire which started in the 1500's and finished on the 1/4/1974 with the institution of the Local Goverment Act 1972. This is really frustrating to Family Historians who do not live in the United States.

FrankLittle

I am not sure I understand the issue you are raising. Yorkshire North Riding is in Places as a County (Top level), 1888-1974. Are you suggesting the starting date is wrong and should be changed, and you cannot get this change accepted?

(And, yes, the word order is a little odd, since you'd usually see the Riding either before Yorkshire with the word 'of' or after Yorkshire between parentheses.)

To check, I added the designation for the death of LY8H-G1H as 'Richmond, Yorkshire (North Riding)' with the standard as Yorkshire North Riding, and it does not disturb the Quality Score.

Gordon Collett

If you have a place name correction that is too complex for the Suggest A New Place method, you should follow the instructions at the end of https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-request-a-new-place-in-the-database-of-standardized-places and e-mail the Places Authority Team directly at placefeedback@familysearch .org

Do keep in mind that that FamilySearch has made some administrative decisions to reduce the complexity of the Places database by not including certain place divisions. For example, Utah is used for both Utah Territory and the State of Utah. Likewise, the single entry for Norway is used for Norway prior to its unification with Denmark, during its unification when it was part of the Kingdom of Denmark and Norway, and after its independence when it was again just Norway.

In these situations, we users can still almost always enter a more correct or complete historical name and link it to the simplified standard like this:

Note that I also used the historically correct name of the county. This linking of the best name to a less strictly accurate but sufficient name allows all functions of Family Tree to work properly while still displaying that best name for other users to make use of.

You may be interested in some of the reasoning and decisions about the Place Database which you can read here: https://www.familysearch.org/en/fieldops/familysearch-places-mission-and-purpose

Do you have an example of a full place name in one of the Ridings that you could post here as both the way you want to have it entered and the current misnomer you see in Family Tree?

Gordon Collett

Here is another example to show that we users can enter place names with far more detail than the Places database will ever contain:

One of the strengths of Family Tree is this dual place name entry design which allows full clarity for other users and a simplified version for computational purposes.